After what turned out to be our biggest show ever in New York, Search Engine Strategies now heads outside the US. Our search marketing event arrives in Munich in April, Toronto in May and London in June.

As with our US shows, each event will feature speakers from major search engines, along with experts on search marketing. Details about all the events can be found via our Search Engine Strategies site. It also has preliminary details of our next US show in San Jose this August.

The Munich show is conducted mostly in German and focuses especially on German search marketing issues. The Toronto show will focus on Canadian issues, while the London show emphasizes UK and European issues.

Search Engine Watch members can now use this form to nominate search engines that should be put forward as finalists during general voting for the 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards to be held next week. The form will let you chose from a number of short-list candidates or you can write-in a favorite, if who or what you like isn’t shown. The nomination round will run through next Monday (the form says this Friday, but I’ll let it run a few days longer). Next Tuesday, you’ll be emailed a special one-time use URL letting you vote in the final round. Voting will run through Friday of that week.

You’ve optimized your web pages to be search engine friendly, and they’re ranking well in search result pages, but so whatif users don’t actually do what you’d like them to do once they arrive at your web site.

MSN has announced it will enter the paid search arena with a full-blown self-service paid listing program similar to those run by Yahoo and Google. The longer version of the story for Search Engine Watch members goes into more depth on how the program was developed, why France and Singapore are pilot countries, more details on the program’s features, ad targeting capabilities and how targeting is done, how the program makes automated ad management even more important and the challenges in rolling the program out in the US market..

Got the itch to go head-to-head with Google, Yahoo and all of the other big search players on the web? A new book provides a detailed blueprint for using and customizing Lucene, open-source search engine software that’s freely available online.

A9’s new OpenSearch program out today allows anyone with search results to create their own “button” that can be added to the A9 search engine, allowing users there to get custom specialty or vertical search results. More in this story.

Claria, the company behind the Gator eWallet software, has released new search relevancy ratings today examining how the top search listings on Google, MSN and Yahoo compare to pages the company says its research shows are actually most relevant. More important, the ratings mark the first use of technology Claria hopes will let it improve the results of major search engines or perhaps offer its own improved search engine. More in this post. For Search Engine Watch members, the Claria Unveils Behaviorial-Based Search Ranking article goes into more depth on this “third generation” of clicktracking.

I’ve mentioned Google’s problem with 302 redirects possibly “hijacking” someone else’s page in passing before, always meaning to do a longer article explaining the situation more. The new Page Hijack: The 302 Exploit, Redirects and Google article up from Claus Schmidt looks to do an admirable job of explaining the situation, so check that out if you want to come up to speed. More on that and a round-up of similar information, in this post.

Just launched, the new Google Local Business Center allows US business to find their listings in Google Local. It also allows those not already listed in Google Local to gain new listings. A bit more on how it works, in this post.

Upset about Google AutoLink, the new Google Toolbar feature that adds links to web pages that it feels are appropriate? You might try a new tool created by Mark Pilgrim that inserts links on Google’s own pages. A look at the tool and a revisit over developments with the AutoLink system, in this post.

Search-Specific Agencies Fight for Survival from MediaWeek comes away from the SES NY show earlier this month with this frightening sounding conclusion: “Many SEMs also likely wondered whether the event might be their last trip to New York.” While there will be more acquisitions, I think SEM firms will still survive. More in this post.

If you’ve somehow missed discussion of “The Long Tail,” it’s a reference to a landmark article of the same name by Wired editor Chris Anderson that ran last October. It covered how the media and entertainment industries will succeed not by pushing only mass market hits that are popular among many but by also mining the “long tail” of interest among a few in less-popular books, songs, movies and more. And in this article, a look at how search has long tail, too. Many search marketers have already understood this, the need to tap the “search tail.” If you haven’t, learn more in this article.

Ever wondered about the organizations that oversee the architecture and operation of the Internet? A recently published article provides an enlightening glimpse behind the scenes of the net’s governing bodies.

Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: Google Cloaking and Keyword Loading On Pages – Load Balancing and Its Effects on Search Engine Optimization – Changing Domains To Be Re-included In Yahoo – Google is Now Asking for a Code if You Use a Rank Checker – Google Adds Weather Feature, and more.

USA Today looks at how Google’s AdSense program has grown to help publishers make money: Google’s AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites. I get to be one of the voices in the article not seeing things as so rosy. A closer look at AdSense having nothing to do with search and the irony of how it now fuels the same search spam that Google has to combat.

Google has enhanced its news service with a number of new features that make it easy to modify your own version of the Google News page by adding or deleting sources, and to share the customized page with others.

The Changes in the Yahoo Directory thread in our Search Engine Watch Forums notes that the Yahoo Directory home page has gained a new look and feel. In addition, sites are now sorted by popularity, as I’ll explain more below.

Nextaris, a web-based “dashboard” for the researcher was formally released today. Chris had several positive thing to say about this feature-filled service in his September 2004 Search day review: Nextaris: An Integrated Web Research Dashboard. He concludes his article by saying that Nextaris is, “blazing a trail for the next generation of web research tools.” A longer look at what’s provided also, in this post, including a mobile version.

In his ClickZ article, Nonconverting Keywords and the Search Continuum, Fredrick Marckini is stunned that some comScore and Overture research about conversions released at the end of last year hasn’t been more widely discussed. It should have been, because it revealed how important tracking offline conversions is to search marketers. More on why it’s so crucial to improve online and offline tracking, to better compete, in this post.

Links to the week’s topics from search engine forums across the web: SES New York: Live Coverage – Google Hires Top Windows Programmer – Yahoo’s Contextual Ads in the Wild – Can Google Push Users To Yahoo & MSN? – Overture Services To Become Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions – The Best SEO Tactic: Do Nothing at all?, and more.

Google Maps are now available on Google Local on both the US and Canadian sites. Before today, Google was using maps provided by a third party on Google Local. More detailed business information is also offered. A rundown, in this post.

Looking for photos, music, text, books and other content that’s free to share or modify for your own purposes? The Creative Commons search engine can help you find tons of (legally) free stuff on the web.

A bit of re-branding news to begin the month of March. The Overture brand is no more. All of Overture’s and Yahoo’s marketing services will now use the name: Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions. Details in this news release.

Sixty years ago, Vannevar Bush laid out a passionate vision of an ‘information appliance’ of the future. Looking back, we find a remarkably prescient description of what we today call the world wide web.

A month after we posted on the head of the France’s national library (Bibliothhque nationale de France) being concerned with Google’s ambitious program to digitize library materials from several large libraries “favouring Anglo-Saxon ideas and the English language.” Today we’re reading about President Jacques Chirac of France calling for a European project to digitize library books. In this post, links to the translation of his statement and the bigger issue that it’s not Anglo-Saxon domination to worry about but that none of the many digitization projects underway right now are cooperating.

Google’s notable for having many Democratic dignitaries show up, but worth a note that former US Secretary Of State Colin Powell — and big-league Republican, stopped by the Googleplex earlier this month. More from GoogleBlogoscoped: Colin Powell Visits Google.

The answer man from News.com has GuruNet CEO Bob Rosenschein — whose company runs Answers.com — answering some questions of his own, such why the company will succeed at making money this time, when it failed previously, how it’s not competing with other search engines, even though some think it is. And in this post, a bit more on how search engines themselves are indeed changing their DNA to provide direct answers.

Yahoo’s new Tech Buzz Game is “a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends. As a player, your goal is to predict how popular various technologies will be in the future.” More on the game and some PowerPoint slides from a presentation about it, in this post.

Earlier today Danny blogged about the new Google X interface from Google Labs. Now, a day after launching the service, it’s already offline. Philipp and News.com report that Google X was taken down sometime this afternoon. Why? Google isn’t saying. Earlier, Danny wrote, “Google X comes from apparently similar functionality in the MacOS system.” Hmm, perhaps Apple had a few issues with the “look” and “feel” of the service and Google decided to simply kill their “homage” to OS X. According to the News.com article, both Google and Apple were unavailable for comment. As of 9pm EST, the Google X remains unreachable. Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google X.

Feedster has just made some of its already robust advanced search syntax easier to use. It’s all documented here. Impressive! I’m very happy to see that the proximity operator (near) remains available. You’re even able to specify how many words “term a” can be from “term b.” If you don’t specify a number, the default is ten words in either direction. Presently, the only large general web engine to offer a proximity operator is Exalead. Too bad. When available, proximity operators can help deliver more precise results. Kudos to Feedster on improving their already robust search syntax.

Google has lost an appeal of a trademark infringement case in France and will have to pay $100,300 in damages. “The court in Versailles, west of Paris, found that Google Inc. was guilty of “trademark counterfeiting” and ordered it to pay the damages originally awarded to French travel companies Luteciel and Viaticum, as well as costs.” More in the article: Google Loses French Trademark Appeal.

Arik Hesseldahl over at Forbes writes about Gmail being made available to even more people. He reports that “random users” at Google.com are being invited to open Gmail accounts. Arik then goes on to speculate that Gmail might “officially” launch on April 1st, exactly one year after the beta became available amidst talk that Gmail was just an April Fools Day prank from the Googleplex. I’ve heard other Google “watchers” (myself included) also speculating that April 1, 2005 will be the date of the “official” launch. Finally, a note to Forbes, it’s Gmail not G-Mail. More in the article: G-mail Nearing Prime Time.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a new service called FeedBeep that notifies users of new RSS headlines (based on keywords) via SMS (text message). I just learned that the beta is now open to anyone (in the U.S. or Belgium) who can access text messages on their phone or mobile device. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds. Details on the site. I’m off to give it a go.

Gary blogged earlier a new mobile search product that FAST has rolled out. FAST Into New Mobile Search from InternetNews.com provides a few more details about the mSearch service. Pity about the name, though. mSearch also the same name for the new search marketing agency brand being rolled out worldwide by WPP that I wrote about earlier this year. I mean, it’s exactly the same right down to the use of a little m before the word search!

Back in 2003, Google took a lot of flak for banning its AdSense affiliates from criticizing the service and if I recall correctly, discussing how much they earn. New changes to the terms say that it’s now OK to talk about earnings. But you still can’t be disparaging! Plus, direct deposit options and other changes, covered in this post.

Popular Search Marketing Myths Debunked from Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide takes a nice look at some of the popular search marketing wisdom you may hear out there and explains that it ain’t necessarily so.

A brief addendum to Danny’s post about A9’s just announced OpenSearch service. When you review the list of databases already available you’ll see that A9 has also launched their own weblog search engine called “A9 Top Blogs Search.” It currently provides searchable access to, “a constantly updated set of recent blog entries from over three hundred of the most influential English language blogs on the web.” I was unable to find a list of what 300+ blogs are being searched or what criteria A9 uses to determine a blogs influence.

Greg Notess (also a librarian) has posted a couple of new and interesting items on his Search Engine Showdown site. You’ll find a Premlinary review of Exalead, a look at how the major web engines handle long words and an item about how Yahoo is now searching stop words in phrases and how it “breaks” several “hacks” for Yahoo proximity searching. I agree with Greg, Yahoo needs to bring back both truncation and the proximity operator that were once available at AltaVista.

Word of something new from Vivisimo’s Clusty.com this afternoon. The company has just launched a new “government tab” that allows you to search and cluster results from a variety of government info sources including FirstGov, MSN limited to the “.gov” domain, DefenseLink, political news from Reuters, the Associated Press, and CNN, and a number of prominent American think tanks, including RAND, The Brookings Institution, and The Cato Institute. An advanced search interface is available. Also, Clusty continues to make search/cluster versions of key government reports and documents available. They’re now providing a search/cluster version of the 2006 U.S. Budget. Finally, Clusty now offers a shortcut to find info about members of the U.S. Congress. Enter a state name, postal abbreviation, or Zip Code in the search box and at the top of the page you’ll find pictures, links to voting records, and email info.

Big brand? “Get over yourself,” says Shari Thurow, when it comes to SEO. In her Big Brands Equal Big SEO Opportunities column on ClickZ today, she looks at how being a big brand can give you opportunities in search engine optimization but doesn’t mean guarantees if you aren’t willing to accommodate search engines. That’s especially so give there are smaller, nimble companies who will.

SiliconValley.com points to a transcript of keynote speech by Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, where he tells a story of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin discussing the coolness of owning your own 767 while traveling on the private jet of an unnamed billionaire. The duo also discuss the idea of Google branching off into making underwear and bras. If that’s not strange enough, you’ll note that before you get to the actual transcript, the site hosting it is printing correspondence telling it to remove the transcript because of copyright issues. The site obviously disagrees. But that didn’t keep it from being pulled out of Google, as this post looks at more.

For those of you who want to follow the latest happenings from the Blogger team at Google, you can now read them on their new blog, Blogger Buzz. BTW, nothing about the no-follow tag in the first few postings. In fact, I still haven’t noticed any info about no-follow anywhere on the Blogger site.

Yahoo and AOL have both announced deals that will provide Blackberry users with preinstalled versions of Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger clients on their devices. Versions of Yahoo Messenger and AIM are already available from several wireless providers. Also, more about other mobile services AOL plans to release in the Infoworld article: AOL unveils set of new mobile services. And FAST Search and Transfer has launched a new mobile product called Fast mSearch that can intergrate a variety of mobile content. More info here.

Interesting read on the Silicon.com site about three leading UK travel providers (First Choice, Thomas Cook and Thomson) telling travel agents that they are no longer allowed to use their trademarks in keyword advertising on Google. More in the article: Travel companies ban trademarks from Google

This CMPNet Asia story points out that the mobile version of My Yahoo now allows you to view your RSS feeds via your WAP browser. In other words, My Yahoo joins Bloglines from Ask Jeeves as services offering mobile tools to access your feeds. More info and details about how to access your feeds via My Yahoo Mobile in the story: Yahoo Launches Mobile RSS News Feed and in the Yahoo Search Blog post: My Yahoo Mobile RSS.

Since Google purchased Keyhole (a 3D satellite imagery product) last October there has been plenty of talk about how Google will use the technology. While that talk continues, Google is growing a team to sell the product to people/companies in various industries. I was just perusing new job openings at Google and came across one for an “inside sales rep” (aka telephone and email work) selling Keyhole to the real estate, architecture/engineering/construction, telecommunications, transportation and other markets.

Who’s Shopping? Who’s Researching? has ClickZ executive editor Rebecca Lieb coming away impressed with the research versus shop search options that new shopping search engine Become.com plans to roll out. But as an “elephant” of a feature, it’s something that the bigger search engines could also do, given that they do have “pure play” shopping search engines of their own. The article has some more details on Become, including the use of human editors to select sites with reviews. Consumer Reports content is mentioned being crawled — Yahoo Shopping has long offered some of this content as well. Our own look at Become and how it is shaping up against other shopping search engines is in the works, so stay tuned.

Hey, I love it if you search for something and found my site about search engines. But it’s always been my goal since the very beginning (that’s 1996!) that if you find me, I want you to leave your email address to I can continue to reach out to you (with your permission, of course). If the excitement over search and enthusiasm over RSS has made you forget email, don’t. It’s still used by lots of people and is a great way to convert and stay connected with the people who found you the first time. Search and Retain: The Search/E-Mail Combo from ClickZ looks at this more.

Contextual ads aren’t search, but being sold alongside search means that search marketers may tap into them as a way to gain more traffic. Marketers Split on Contextual Ad Effectiveness from ClickZ takes a brief look. Don’t expect search-like conversion, but also remember that if they convert higher than your cost, contextual ads can still be great.

The next WebmasterWorld Search Conference is slated for June 21-23 in New Orleans. Basic details can be found here, with a conference agenda promised soon. For a flavor, see our round-up of coverage out of the last one: WebmasterWorld Conference Coverage: Day 2 (also links to Day 1).

Those of you who track total index size (or at least what the engines tell us) might be interested in learning that Matt Wells and his team at Gigablast have posted an increase to their total. Gigablast now lists 1,500,103,760 pages indexed on their home page. The total previously listed was 1,014,325,120.

FareChase, the travel search site that Yahoo acquired in 2004 is announcing a few enhancements to the service. A post on the Yahoo Search Blog says that FareChase is now available for Firefox and Safari users and offers more search and refinement tools including the ability to sort results by price and departure times. FareChase is one of a growing number of travel research tools that simultaneously search and aggregate results from disparate databases. Competitors include Mobissimo, Kayak, and SideStep. More about these services in the Charlotte Observer article: Search engines revved up for one-stop travel service.

Websense, a computer security firm. has just released a new report that includes a brief discussion about the use of web engines to spread malware. You can read about the report in the vnunet.com article: Hackers ‘poison’ search engine results. If you would like to read the full text of the report, it’s available here.

Interested in learning more about A9’s new “visual” yellow pages? During SES last week, Zachary Rodgers from ClickZ chatted with Barnaby Dorfman, a VP at Amazon’s A. The Q&A style interview: Questions for Amazon.com’s Barnaby Dorfman, has info about the companies providing data to the service, Dorfman’s thoughts about why the images can be useful to consumers, how a9 plans to increase the user base, and much more. For an overview about what the service has to offer, see the SearchDay article: Amazon’s A9 Launches Visual Yellow Pages.

Word this morning that Gurunet (the parent of Answers.com) and Google have signed a deal that will place Google AdSense advertising on Answers.com pages. Gurunet also announced that they’re now offering a co-branded and integrated version of Google on their site. Links are located in a box labeled “search” on the left side of pages. Answers.com provides web results via a co-branded page. You’ll also see links to Google Images and Google News. Direct links to weblog content from Technorati and product search from Amazon.com are also available. At the beginning of this year, Answers.com began providing Google with dictionary definitions and other material linked from Google search pages.

It looks like Apple’s iTunes, Real’s Rhapsody, and other digital music download services will have a new competitor, Yahoo. According to a Silicon.com article: iTunes gets a Yahoo rival, Yahoo will to unveil a digital music service and player by the end of this month. Yahoo recently rebranded all of their music properties, including the top-rated LAUNCH, as Yahoo Music. Last September, Yahoo purchased Musicmatch, an online jukebox and digital music download service for $160 million in cash. BTW, in case you’re wondering, Google owns the domain name, GoogleMusic.com!

Mark Jen, the former Google employee who was fired for blogging, has a new job and it’s also in Mountain View. According to Zawodny and News.com, Jen has landed a job at Plaxo, a contact management service. I wonder if one of Jen’s responsibilities will be posting to the Plaxo blog? It hasn’t been updated since December.

Ansearch, the new Australia web engine that is set to formally launch on March 31 (we’ve been blogging about it since November) has signed a two-year deal with Overture (aka Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions) to provide pay-per-click ads. Additional info in the ZDNet Austalia article: Ansearch signs pay-per-click ad deal. The article also touches on a couple of “new” features that will be available when Ansearch launches. BTW, I’ve noticed that Ansearch is now providing some cached content, detailed info about pages, and a page with direct links (aka “site map”) to various parts of a web site.

The audio of the 23 minute interview between Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang and Charlie Rose sat is currently available for FREE via Audible.com (look for the Free Audio links near the top of the page or search for “Jerry Yang”). Some bulletpoints from it and a bit more, in this post.

A post on the Google Blog informs us that Google now has a shortcut that provides a four-day weather forecast in a OneBox at the top of web search results page. More on using this and similar features with other search engines, in this post.

Time for another clickfraud article coming from major mainstream press organizations. This time around it’s The New York Times/IHT with the story: Fears of fraud grow on pay-per-click ads. The article includes a couple of comments from Patrick Giordani, the head of loss prevention at Yahoo Search Marketing Services (aka Overture) and Salar Kamangar, director for product management at Google. In the past couple of months we’ve read clickfraud stories in Newsweek and from the AP. Also, Stefanie Olsen from News.com reports from SES about how some companies are dealing with clickfraud.

Ben Elgin at Business Week asks if Google is a one-trick pony? “A handful of analysts increasingly are questioning whether Google’s laser-like focus on search may be something of an Achilles’ heel. Google remains almost entirely dependent for growth on search — a business that’s poised to slow. In the maturing U.S. market, Forrester Research Inc. predicts growth will drop from 45% to 30% this year.”

Interfax reports that Google News China was unavailable after trying to access from various locations throughout China. The article goes on to mention that one of Google’s English language news sites was often inaccessible.

Ask is now using their own relevancy algorithm on top of the image database that’s provided by Picsearch. The Picsearch database and algorithm is also used with MSN’s Image Search. The AJ blog post offers a couple of before and after examples.

You know about PageRank and about two weeks ago I mentioned a new paper from Stanford’s Database Group discussing PeopleRank. Today, another paper posted on the Stanford server. This one introduces TrustRank that has been developed to help fight web spam. Here’s the abstract. Another version of the paper was published in March 2004. The full text of the paper: Combating Web Spam with TrustRank is available as a 12 page PDF. It was co-authored by Zoltan Gyongyi (Stanford), Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford) and Jan Pedersen (Yahoo).

It looks like Accenture is joining IBM’s WebFountain, Intelliseek and others in monitoring buzz and reputation from the web and blogosphere. The Canada.com article: Net searcher has its ears to the blog, provides background about a prototype reputation/blogosphere buzz sevice called “Online Search” from Accenture’s Tech Lab in Palo Alto.

As many of you know, Yahoo will celebrating their 10th anniversary later this week (March 2nd to be precise) and the AP has put together a wonderful timeline with key dates and milestones in Yahoo’s history. I also did a bit of research and found some early posts about Yahoo in the Usenet archive and elsewhere. Those are in this post. Enjoy!

The LA Times article Film Download, Search Firms to Link Services covers about a deal that will allow people who use BlinkxTV* to be able to keyword search trailers of films available from Movielink, a web-based service that allows users to download complete films to their computers. More in this news release. Also, in this blog post, I offer an overview of several web-based audio/video search tools. Some use closed-captioning associated with the video while others use metadata or speech-recognition technology. BlinkxTV is available as a standalone site or via the TV icon on the Blinkx Desktop.

As someone who teaches many web search training classes I would like to offer a tip o’ the cap to a simple but elegant feature found on AOL’s advanced search page. A frequent challenge to new and even some veteran users of advanced search interfaces is entering terms into the various boxes and then not having a clear understanding (aka confusion) of what they are or aren’t searching. AOL’s Search Preview, located on the right side of the advanced search page, takes the material entered into each search box and uses it to dynamically generate the query into a single easy/easier to understand sentence. Words and items that will be searched appear in green. Material that will not be searched appears in red.

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This week, both LinkedIn and Facebook are beefing up their paid social offerings in different ways, while Google seeks to cut off Adwords revenues for fake news sites. And might Google be favouring desktop over its own AMP in its upcoming mobile-first index?

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.